Vital Mud – Hiske Altena

Vital Mud by the Dutch artist Hiske Altena is a photobook built around the clay hypothesis, the theory that life on Earth began in clay. Published by The Eriskay Connection, the project started with a stone. In the 1980s Altena’s uncle, a retired geologist, found an unusual rattle stone containing organic-looking structures that conventional geology could not explain, but that might support the idea that clay helped early life to evolve.

Altena works with staged photographs, collage and found imagery. The book moves between rattle stones, clay crystals, bacterial life cycles and the formation of landscapes, and asks what the first forms of life might have looked like. Alongside the scientific material, she follows the same image of life rising from earth and clay through folklore, mythology and religious stories.

The book treats science the way Altena treats photography: as a perspective that changes over time. Its central question is how we relate to things that don’t match what is generally accepted. The dummy was shortlisted for the Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards, and the first, self-published version was selected as one of the Best Dutch Book Designs of 2021.

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/ published 2023
/ 144 pages
/ otabind softcover with folded inlay
/ color and black & white photographs
/ english language
/ edition of 1.000
/ 21,7 × 30,4 cm

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